Prayer is communion with God.  Prayer is the channel through which we open our tender, fragile, delicate human hearts to our Lord.  Hearts which He has singled out as His throne — “All that is in heaven and earth I have ordained for thee, except the human heart, which I have made the habitation of My beauty and glory” (Bahá’u’lláh).  Hearts which in their delicateness and fragility often go astray.

We go through life hitching our wagons to stars that fall; whereupon we are miserable, and lasso the next ones.  Our leaves shrivel, our moons wane, the marbles we build our statues of are crumbled.  Only God is always strong, always there, always permanent.  Only God is worthy to be worked for.  And to achieve this detachment from everything except God we require prayer.

(Marzieh Gail, Dawn over Mount Hira)

We all struggle with our existence.  To understand ourselves and to understand one another.  Yet it seems that ‘finding ourselves’ is not something we can actually do on our own.  Shoghi Effendi explains that the more we search for ourselves the less likely we are to find ourselves; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that the master key to self-discovery is self-forgetfulness.  But this task of forgetting ourselves is very difficult.  Especially living immersed in a social reality that begs to differ all the time.

We are exposed to music, television, films, books and popular thought that insist on the promotion of self as the key to happiness, that tell us “self-help” is “within our reach!” And then provide us with easy a+b=c formulas in self-help books and manuals to achieve just that.  But do they really work?  Probably not, or else why would keep buying the manuals?  We’re not satisfied yet.

Prayer and service, however…Prayer and service help us discover our true selves.  In prayer we ask God to help us be detached.  Not to fulfill our every whim and desire but to help us align our will to His.  His infinitely superior, infinitely wiser, infinitely more beneficial will.  And as we align our will to His, the mystery of “who am I?” and “why am I here?” begins to reveal itself.  The thing about this ‘mystery’ is that it does not ever seem to become permanently clear.

Many of us weave in and out of clarity, of acute awareness of who we are why we are here; or at the very least, of the discipline to fulfill our high purpose in this life.

Prayer, like any other habit, must be exercised daily or else it degenerates.  With increased use we become more adept at it, and with decreased use we become more likely to forget why we pray at all.  So we begin to lessen the habit and lessen the habit until it no longer forms part of our reality.  Then we begin to roam the self-help aisles in our mega-bookstores and indulge ourselves in thoughts and actions that centre around our own ‘happiness’ all the while neglecting the true fountain of joy in this life.  Nearness and servitude to God.  Nearness and servitude to His servants.

Each and every one of us, no matter how high or low our station in life, need to serve one another and care deeply about the welfare of each and all.  But maintaining this level of consciousness can be difficult without the assistance of prayer.   Additionally, prayer and meditation often make clear the ‘how’.  How do we assist one another?  How do we grow closer to God?

Then there is the sweetness of prayer.  The sweetness of surrender to One who is so far exalted above us and who loves us so truly, so completely—in a way that we can never really love ourselves or one another.  In His tablet to the Shah of Iran, Násiri’d-Din Sháh, Bahá’u’lláh explains to Him—a human being who caused so much pain and anguish, who was responsible for the torture and mass killings of thousands of early believers in Iran—to this person, Bahá’u’lláh says:

They that surround thee love thee for their own sakes, whereas this Youth loveth thee for thine own sake, and hath had no desire except to draw thee nigh unto the seat of grace, and to turn thee toward the right-hand of justice.

(Baha’u'llah)

But He also explains that in order for His love to reach us, we must love Him.  “Love me that I may love thee; if thou lovest Me not My love can in no wise reach thee.”

Prayer is an instrument we use to express our love for God and to deepen that love; to open ourselves to the grace and bounty that is continually flowing towards us.  Tyrant or saint; king or pauper.  One and all, He loves.

Marzieh Gail offers the following on the absurdity of asking why we must pray to God in order to grow near to Him:

And yet people inquire why they should pray, why God does not come to them — remarks as logical as sitting in a darkened room and wondering why all the sweep and glitter of the summer sunlight does not penetrate.

She also remarks that:

It is not surprising that a prayerless people are driven to drugs and stimulants and a hundred forms of useless activity. They have no antidote for life, and no effective means of achieving the ‘respite and nepenthe’ for which they long. It is not surprising that people cheat one another, desert one another, kill one another, because only universal prayer can make the world safe for us to live in.

Embedded in the act of prayer is also the feeling of ecstasy; the ecstasy of divine communion with the Source of our beings, with the Breath that animates our mortal frames.

Reveal then Thyself, O Lord, by Thy merciful utterance and the mystery of Thy divine being, that the holy ecstasy of prayer may fill our souls – a prayer that shall rise above words and letters and transcend the murmur of syllables and sounds – that all things may be merged into nothingness before the revelation of Thy splendor.

(Compilations, Baha’i Prayers)

Though there is much more that could be said on prayer, a final point that I feel must be included is that of cleansing our hearts.  Benjamin Franklin apparently kept a notebook with all his sins in it, but Confucius said, ‘I can do as my heart lusteth and never swerve from right’. The more we pray, the more we align our will to the Divine; the more we polish the rust from off our hearts and allow our desires to be such as will lead us to joy, to well-being — to God.

***

About eight months ago a close friend of mine organized a small informal dinner with a married couple who are well known and highly respected. She wanted them to talk to us about marriage and share some insights with us which they have gleaned after over thirty years of a healthy marriage. In the course of the evening the husband made a statement that blew my mind and that I frequently revisit and meditate on (hence this post 8 months later). He said that when he married his wife he vowed to himself that he would never criticize her. (That’s right—never). He said something along the lines of “I married her because she’s an intelligent, mature woman. She has a relationship with Bahá’u’lláh and she’s accountable to Him [not me, he seemed to imply] for her actions. She brings herself to account each night and doesn’t need me to tell her how to improve. Even if she does something that really annoys me, I don’t tell her. She’s smart and I know she’ll figure it out.” Mind blown.

How could you be married to someone for thirty years and never criticize that person? I just could not wrap my mind around the amount of self control that would require. And is it even a good thing? The next day I had lunch with a large group of people and I brought this statement up. It led to a very heated debate about whether criticism in a marriage is a pivotal element of its functioning, and spilled over into a discussion about whether friends and family members should criticize one another.

After giving it a lot of thought, and admitting freely that I think it is very difficult to put into action, I agree with him. I think the crux of the matter is that human beings are accountable before God, not one another, for their actions. Additionally, every human being is fallible and has limited perception. Often the things I have been praised for have ended up being behaviors I should have actually curbed, and likewise, things I was criticized over ended up being behaviors that were positive. Because none of us know the context of one another’s lives—not fully—and we are not able to see all the nuances. More importantly, even if someone is wrong, why do we need to point it out? It is one thing to have an open and earnest conversation with someone and quite another to criticize each other and tell each other what to do.

The gentleman’s wife agreed with her husband’s approach and told us that in her opinion a lot of Western cultures have a strong culture of constructive criticism but most “constructive” criticism is actually quite destructive.

Another young mother was giving me advice once on how to encourage more positive behavior from some of my students and she told me to always point out the ways they have improved and outline the further progress they can make, rather than criticizing them. She said that with her own children she has seen that when she points out their “bad” behaviors, they seem to embody those traits even more, but when she speaks to them from the perspective of ‘this is where we are currently and here is where we can continue to progress’, their behavior improves.

We have to be so careful as human beings not to crush one another with the things we say, even when we think we are being helpful. Because at the end of the day, our role is to love, support and encourage one another, not modify each other’s behavior and pass judgment on one another.

… Each of us is responsible for one life only, and that is our own. Each of us is immeasurably far from being ‘perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’ and the task of perfecting our own life and character is one that requires all our attention, our will- power and energy. If we allow our attention and energy to be taken up in efforts to keep others right and remedy their faults, we are wasting precious time. We are like ploughmen each of whom has his team to manage and his plough to direct, and in order to keep his furrow straight he must keep his eye on his goal and concentrate on his own task. If he looks to this side and that to see how Tom and Harry are getting on and to criticize their ploughing, then his own furrow will assuredly become crooked.

~ From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi

On no subject are the Bahá’í teachings more emphatic than on the necessity to abstain from fault-finding, while being ever eager to discover and root out our own faults and overcome our own failings.

~ From a letter written on behalf of The Universal House of Justice

Person A walks around this maze with his eyes wide open. He sees the fire and knows to steer away from it. He sees the pot hole and knows to walk around it. He smells the roses but spots the thorns and knows not to lean in too closely. But the maze is also lined with gentle streams and giant waterfalls. Beautiful gardens and delectable delicacies. With all of his senses fully awakened, he partakes of its benefits as he makes his way through its many corridors. Making his way through it isn’t easy. Some bends are harder to come out of. Some elements are harder to easily identify as “splendor” or “horror. Yet, with eyes wide open, he is usually able to steer carefully away from the dangerous elements so often comingling with the beneficent ones.

Person B person walks around the maze with a giant blindfold over her eyes. Encouraged by the warmth she approaches the source; the flames spread too quickly for her to turn around unscathed. She didn’t realize it was fire. She manages to run away, skin raw and throbbing, only to fall directly into the pot hole. She breaks a leg but still manages to climb out. Her olfactory draws her near to the beautiful aroma emanating from the roses; she follows the scent, and before she knows it, her face is covered in thorns. In the meanwhile, the gentle streams and thornless flowers are all lost on her. She hears the roaring of the waterfall but is much too scared to approach it. She spends all her days wandering aimlessly through the maze, completely oblivious to all the beauty it has to offer, accruing little more than scars.

Bahá’u’lláh likens His laws to the lamps of His loving-providence. His laws guide us in this complex world so full of beauty and so follow of sorrow. We know that true freedom comes from submission to His will; obedience to His laws. It sounds pretty counter-intuitive doesn’t it? That freedom comes from willful obedience. But then you think about life. The fact that we’ve all been created for the same purpose. The fact that we all live in the same world and we all experience tests, often rather violent tests. Though the specific form of our tests may differ, the underlying purpose of them is the same. The main difference is that some of us live in this world with our eyes wide open. Certainly, we don’t always know which way to go, sometimes we just can’t seem to sidestep those pot holes, (though probably a lot of the time if we’ve landed in a pot hole it’s because we’ve willfully thrown ourselves in it), but still, we know the way out. We have the vision and the tools to navigate through life, able to discern danger from wonder, splendor from depravity, life from death.

Others of us go through life approaching fires, falling into potholes, missing out on all the magnificence of the world, simply because we think following our own whims and fancies constitutes freedom, when in reality, it just makes us captives to our own blindness.

In considering the effect of obedience to the laws on individual lives, one must remember that the purpose of this life is to prepare the soul for the next. Here one must learn to control and direct one’s animal impulses, not to be a slave to them. Life in this world is a succession of tests and achievements, of falling short and of making new spiritual advances. Sometimes the course may seem very hard, but one can witness, again and again, that the soul who steadfastly obeys the Law of Bahá’u'lláh, however hard it may seem, grows spiritually, while the one who compromises with the law for the sake of his own apparent happiness is seen to have been following a chimera: he does not attain the happiness he sought, he retards his spiritual advance and often brings new problems upon himself.

(written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice)

The drama of it all is not lost on me. The excitement, the rush of blood to the head, the endorphines. I get it. Sports are a big deal. For countless reasons. Some meritorious; others not so much.

Regardless of the pros and cons of local, national and international sporting events, how can any one of us feel comfortable living in a world where a company is willing to shell out 132 million dollars for a soccer player while entire pockets of the population in nearby regions die of malaria because they don’t have access to the 10 dollars needed to purchase a bed net.

Clearly our financial woes are not solely material. Our financial problems are deeply rooted in the decaying morality of a materialistic credo that gorges on frivolity, o.d.’s on self-centered pleasure pursuits and panics at the thought of having to prolong gratification for any considerable amount of time.

Does this mean we should send our money off right now to XY&Z agency so that it can buy mosquito nets for those who need them? Is that the solution? It might help, but it’s like plugging one leak in a dam so filled with holes it’s about 10 seconds away from bursting. I’m not discouraging charity. I’m just saying it’s not enough. A solely material solution to one ramification of a moral crisis is not going to rebuild the dam. Besides, with countless episodes of corrupt leaders whose sticky fingers dripping in greed just can’t seem to find their way out of the money jar, it’s not entirely implausible that your capital will help a self-indulgent hypocrite finance his or her latest vacation home.

The problems are complex. The symptoms are overwhelming. And as a first step we need to rightly diagnose the disease. If we keep insisting that impoverished nations, for instance, need nothing more than money thrown at them, or that populations dying of venerial diseases simply need more condoms, the overwhelming symptoms will not only never disappear, they will continue to amass until there really is no hope.

So then is the solution merely spiritual? Should we all organize 24-hour prayer campaigns and write pretty songs and lengthy blog posts to praise peace and talk about how we’re all one and the children are our future? Is that going to feed the starving children? Is that going to cure the diseased?

For an entire nation to be lifted out of poverty, you can’t just erase debt and then hope the nation doesn’t amass it again.  I don’t think there are easy answers or simple solutions to any of this. You can’t wave a wand and expect fundamental problems to just vanish.  But you can’t avoid problems simply because you don’t have the solutions. These age-old problems need new approaches. The people of the world need to be empowered.  The most oppressed from among us need to have a voice. Not just a venue in which to speak. But they need to actually be given tools to learn how to use their voices.

Part II will focus on what actually constitutes oppression, as well as some of the fledgling movements aimed at empowering all human beings.

Then I read the article. Even the fainstest glimmering of a Disney Channel plot line was completely annihilated.  

A little girl in Russia raised by dogs…while her mother was there. The article is sparse in detail, but there is explicit reference to the fact that the girl was forced to live among the dogs inside the house, never to go outside. She, naturally, began to emulate the dogs’ behavior. She spoke no Russian, but instead mimicked the noises of the animals who were her [possibly sole] educators and jumped with fright anytime anyone approached the door, just as the dogs would do.

I cannot even begin to put into words the feelings of anger and almost rage that surged within me when I thought of the despicable actions of this “mother” who forced this kind of existence upon her own child. I immediately thought of one of  The Hidden Words of Baha’u'llah wherein He affirms that:

Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence and the essence of all created things. Thus, ere thou didst issue from thy mother’s womb, I destined for thee two founts of gleaming milk, eyes to watch over thee, and hearts to love thee…

God gave us parents, designed us in such a way, that at the very moment of our birth into this world we would be enveloped in love. Nurtured with love. Trained by love. Our parents have a responsibility not  just to provide for us materially, but to educate us and train us in such a way that we may develop a relationship with God.  Baha’u'llah says that the primary purpose of marriage is to bring forth children who will make mention of Him. We are here to know God and to love God. We are here to advance civilization. 

And yet there exist human beings in this world who cannot even be bothered to speak to their children? Much less to give them a chance to develop an intimate relationship with their Creator. How unimaginably horrible. The sheer cruelty of it. The level of disconnect that this woman must have from her own humanity…one can only wonder what her own upbringing was like. 

We know that if left to their own devices, without proper training and education, human beings can be given to cruelty more savage than that of the fiercest animal predator. ‘Abdu’l-Baha says “[w]ere there no educator, all souls would remain savage, and were it not for the teacher, the children would be ignorant creatures.” 

On the overall importance of education, He goes onto say the following:

It is for this reason that, in this New Cycle, education and training are recorded in the Book of God as obligatory and not voluntary. That is, it is enjoined upon the father and mother, as a duty, to strive with all effort to train the daughter and the son, to nurse them from the breast of knowledge and to rear them in the bosom of sciences and arts. Should they neglect this matter, they shall be held responsible and worthy of reproach in the presence of the stern Lord.

This is a sin unpardonable, for they have made that poor babe a wanderer in the Sahara of ignorance, unfortunate and tormented; to remain during a lifetime a captive of ignorance and pride, negligent and without discernment. Verily, if that babe depart from this world at the age of infancy, it is sweeter and better. In this sense, death is better than life; deprivation than salvation; non-existence lovelier than existence; the grave better than the palace; and the narrow, dingy tomb better than the spacious, regal home…

Therefore, the beloved of God and the maid-servants of the Merciful must train their children with life and heart and teach them in the school of virtue and perfection. They must not be lax in this matter; they must not be inefficient. Truly, if a babe did not live at all it were better than to let it grow ignorant, for that innocent babe, in later life, would become afflicted with innumerable defects, responsible to and questioned by God, reproached and rejected by the people. What a sin this would be and what an omission!

The other day I was flipping through a magazine and on the third page, there was an ad of a half-naked girl in a silver bikini and silver body paint staring back at me with a very come-hither look on her face.   Guess what she was advertising:  water.  One of the most basic, natural things in creation, advertised by half-naked, silver-body-paint girl who had positioned the bottle very seductively near her mouth.  Really?  Is this supposed to entice me to buy water?  I drink water.  I’ve been drinking it since I was born.  I don’t look like her.  Neither will you.  Realistically, anyone looking at the ad knows that, too.  Yet, there must be an appeal; it must work on some level, or else every ad-campaign from “Got Milk” to “Axe Deodorant” to anything else you can think of wouldn’t objectify women and men to promote a product.  Whether or not we actually engage in it, most of us are OD-ing on sex.

So where does the obsession even come from?  There are lots of theories, I’m sure.  I have my own.  Every human being was created because of love and to love, and the highest physical expression of love is sex.  But this is only true within its proper confines (i.e. marriage).  When we separate it from this context, when we sexify everything from water to milk to hygiene products, what value does it hold?  Suddenly what is meant to be, aside from the vehicle for procreation, a special act which deepens ties of intimacy and union between two committed individuals becomes trivial and mundane. 

Unfortunately, the effects of sexification don’t stop at the depreciation of its own intrinsic value. We are told by the religious scriptures of the world’s major religions that we should not engage in sex until marriage. But, why?  Shoghi Effendi explains that:

Briefly stated the Bahá’í conception of sex is based on the belief that chastity should be strictly practised by both sexes, not only because it is in itself highly commendable ethically, but also due to its being the only way to a happy and successful marital life.

I remember the first time I came across this quote.  ”…the only way to a happy and successful marital life.”   Bold statement.   One I didn’t quite understand.  I could wrap my mind around it having negative effects on my soul that I didn’t comprehend because the workings of the spiritual world are a complete mystery to me, anyway.  But this implied that the reason wasn’t merely spiritual.  That it wasn’t a matter of “have sex and you go straight to hell” but that this was also a practical law.  Shoghi Effendi was warning us that engaging in sex outside of marriage would affect us within marriage.  The reasons why sex outside of marriage when you are already married is wrong is obvious.  It’s hard to paint adultery in a favorable light so I will assume that anyone reading this can also understand why fidelity and truthfulness would never allow for one to engage in intimate acts with anyone other than one’s spouse.  But why not be allowed to have sex before we’ve made that commitment?  How is that harmful? 

When I tried to understand this law, it all came down to foundation.  If you build a house on a cracked foundation, the chances that it will crumble are so much higher than if you build it on a firm one.   Even though sex is a physical act, chastity is primarily a spiritual law.  On at least one level, the protection in this law is abundantly clear to me.   As God has designed us, He knows how we’re hard-wired.  He knows what’s good for us, what will hurt us, and how we will react to different things.  If He has ordained that we wait until marriage, perhaps it is in part because He knows that physical acts of intimacy bind us to one another emotionally in ways that are not meant to be broken;  in ways that He did not design to be broken.  So whether we engage in those acts casually, they still have an effect on us, and make it harder for us to be detached from one another, thereby often binding us to people who really aren’t right for us.  Think what a thick veil sex becomes in the process of getting to know someone to determine if he or she is the right person for you.  How many people stay in bad relationships, to the point of marrying the person, because the physical aspect blinds them completely.  Sex is intoxicating.  Why make a potentially life-altering, life-long decision while under the influence? 

And then there’s just common sense.  Human beings are creatures of habit.  When we get used to sleeping with whomever we want whenever we want, when we never learn to develop self-control or discipline, and have never even tried to resist temptation, what’s magically going to enable us to do that once we’re married?  Not a whole lot.

It’s no surprise then that the verity of that “bold statement” about the only way to a happy and successful marital life is everyday confirmed in the marriages crumbling all around us.

I should probably preface this entry by explaining that I am wholly unqualified to write it as I am not nor have I ever been married.  Notwithstanding, family is an area in life that interests me greatly and I have had the good fortune of being raised among the 49% of parents in the West whose marriages do work, and probably the even slimmer percentage of parents whose marriages are happy. 

My interest in writing this piece was born of a conversation I had with a good friend of mine the other night revolving around the idea of “easy familiarity”.  In the Bahá’í Faith, we are discouraged from being overly familiar with others.  This can range from something as simple as, don’t open someone else’s refrigerator and start rummaging through their food without permission, to something like, don’t give yourself permission to be overly intimate with another person outside the confines of marriage.  But I’d never really thought about this concept of not being easily or overly familiar within a marriage.  Clearly, the refrigerator and intimacy examples don’t apply among marriage partners.  But what about the tone in which you address your spouse? 

It’s interesting how often our family members are the people we are most rude and unkind to-because we’re tired at the end of the day when we see them; because we know them so well and feel so comfortable around them that we don’t censor ourselves; because we assume they’ll always be there.  But if you think about it, these are the people we should show the most kindness to, precisely because we’re in it for life.  Why not make that the most loving, joyous experience it can be? 

It is not easy to live life always being vigilant over what you think and say.  But, life isn’t meant to be easy.  And realistically, things don’t work in isolation.  If we are truly intent on developing our virtues-kindess, patience, forbearance, forgiveness-what better laboratory than home? 

Marriage partners have to be so careful not to give themselves permission to snap at each other, to cross lines they justify crossing with ideas like, “But he’s my husband. I should be able to say anything I want around him!”  Why?  Why should you be allowed to gossip with your husband? Why should you be allowed to say something so critical and harsh, something so hurtful, that you would never dare say to another?  Of course, marriage isn’t about ignoring each other’s flaws.  You help each other grow and develop into better people.  But that process doesn’t happen with snide remarks or dwelling on each other’s imperfections, either.  You support one another, you uplift one another.

We shouldn’t confuse being thoughtful and biting our tongues with being formal.  Perhaps formality works among some couples, but that’s certainly not what I’m suggesting.  It is absolutely possible to be comfortable, to be intimate, to be honest and open with a partner without crushing their spirits in the way you speak to them.  And sometimes it is better to simply overlook; to forgive. 

As ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains, “their [husband and wife's] purpose must be this: to become loving companions and comrades and at one with each other for time and eternity…” If they are vigilant over themselves, faithful and true in their actions and kind and respectful in their words, they may experience true marriage, which is “that husband and wife should be united both physically and spiritually, that they may ever improve the spiritual life of each other, and may enjoy everlasting unity throughout all the worlds of God.”

If we regard marriage as an institution whose purpose is, among other things, to add to world unity by starting at the most basic level, and not just as a coming together of two individual beings; if we regard ourselves as partners whose purpose is to strive to ever improve the spiritual life of the other, maybe biting our tongues once in a while, lowering our voices, sweetening our words (genuinely, not condescendingly) will become second nature to us, and marriage won’t feel like hard work.  Instead, we will experience the following, which we are assured is possible, perhaps inevitable, when we align our behavior with the laws of the All-knowing Lord:

In this glorious Cause the life of a married couple should resemble the life of the angels in heaven-a life full of joy and spiritual delight, a life of unity and concord, a friendship both mental and physical. The home should be orderly and well-organized. Their ideas and thoughts should be like the rays of the sun of truth and the radiance of the brilliant stars in the heavens. Even as two birds they should warble melodies upon the branches of the tree of fellowship and harmony.  They should always be elated with joy and gladness and be a source of happiness to the hearts of others. They should set an example to their fellow-men, manifest a true and sincere love towards each other and educate their children in such a manner as to blazon the fame and glory of their family.

~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

 

Gunmen ambush cricket team in Pakistan

 Russia: 5 years lost due to financial crisis

These are just a few of this week’s headlines.  Human beings murdering one another senselessly.  Suicide rates on the rise.  Financial crises gripping the enitre planet.  Many would point to these and endless other headlines as proof that God is indeed a God of wrath since He allows these things to occur.

Can God actually prevent these things from happening?  Of course! He’s the Omniscient, All-Powerful, Almighty Lord of everything.  The entire creation is held in the hollow of His hand.  He can do anything He wants.  But, what role does human accountability play in all of this?  Free will?

If He directly intervened and prevented the gunmen, for instance, from shooting innocents, wouldn’t that reduce the gunmen to puppets?  On the other hand, having now exercised their free will in such a base and brutal way, shouldn’t they be subject to some form of punishment?  It’s not just “revenge”.  It’s a protection for their fellow Sri Lankan citizens who have the right to roam streets that aren’t crowded by men who run around shooting people as they please.

So let’s define some key terms.  Perhaps “wrath” is actually “justice”. If God were only merciful, He would be imperfect.  Because showing mercy to the tyrant is showing cruelty to the innocent.  (See example above.)  Thus it is clear that true justice would demand that you curtail these men’s freedoms, punish them.   Some may deem punishment a form of wrath, but it is certainly mercy as far as the rest of the populace is concerned.  And more than wrath, it is justice, because these men brought their punishments upon themselves.

As such, it is evident that the wrath of God is in  fact the administration of His justice.

How does this work on a larger scale?  Natural disasters, calamities, suffering plaguing all corners and pockets of the globe…are these manifestations of the wrath of God?  Or are they the natural consequence of a society which for ages has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the call of God?  If we followed but ONE law, the law of moderation, for instance, so many of the sufferings plaguing our world would be vanquished.  Small segments of the world’s population wouldn’t live way beyond their means while others died from starvation, hygiene and health problems;  the natural disasters exacerbated by our own civilization carried to excess would be fewer and further in between- and the list goes on.

If He simply wiped away all of the suffering we’ve brought upon ourselves, how would we ever learn?  What would prevent future generations from making the same mistakes over and over again?  A good teacher never does the work for his or her  student, but a good teacher does not abandon the ailing student either, no matter how little attention that student has paid.  And so God does not abandon us in our time of need.   Instead, as we move further away from Him, He sends another Divine Teacher (a Prophet, Messenger, Manifestation) to make known His will unto us.  To remind us of His laws which, put into place, will alleviate our suffering, and will transform this world from a place of sorrow and woe into the promised Kingdom of God on earth.  And in bringing us these teachings, His Manifestation suffers immensely at our hands!  We persecute and revile Him.  Deny His divinity.  Refuse His teachings.  And then…we suffer.  Because His laws are for our good, disobedience to them predictably proves to be harmful.  And after all of this–reviling His Prophets, ignoring His laws which are the source of all benevolence and mercy–we have the audacity to accuse God of being ”wrathful.”

After all, would a kind God allow innocent children to be sold into sexual slavery?  Would a merciful God allow genocides to wipe out entire segments of the population in often vicious and painful ways?

These are just a few questions you could ask if you started to really think about God and His role in our world — especially in today’s world.

On the other hand, you could think of Him as less wrathful but more vengeful — maybe this is the punishment meted out to a heedless society who has ignored His call all throughout the ages.

I certainly have no quick and easy answers.  The very fact that one of the fundamental beliefs in the Bahá’í Faith is that God is unknowable in His essence makes it impossible for me to really know what any of His attributes are.  Wrathful or vengeful?  Merciful and All-Loving?  I really couldn’t say.

However, in the Bible, it says,

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

This clearly signifies that we can only know God through His Messengers, so inasfar as we as a species are concerned, Jesus is God.  Baha’u'llah is God.  Or as close as we’ll ever get.  (I realize this is a heavy statement and could be a topic in and of itself, but, maybe in a latter post we can address God as unknowable, yet still personal, and known through His Prophets and Messengers.)

So, when I think of Jesus, I don’t think wrathful, I certainly don’t think vengeful; but I absolutely think, “merciful” and “loving”.  When I think of the life of Baha’u'llah, I think of His infinite kindness, His abounding generosity, His ceaseless forgiveness.  These attributes don’t seem to square with a God of wrath or vengeance.

So maybe it’s our concept of wrath that is askew.  Maybe what we perceive to be wrath is actually mercy.

Baha’u'llah says,

“My calamity is My Providence.  Outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly, it is mercy and light.”  (emphasis mine)

Then how does one reconcile a God who allows the current calamities and crises to engulf a planet seemingly drowning — albeit it in the flames of its own depravity — with a God who is merciful, and kind, loving and forgiving?

We’ll have to wait until Part II to address these themes…

We swim upstream and currents strong

Heighten struggles to move along

We paddle hard, yet go so slow

Why so painful, it’s hard to know

But hearts seek beauty, and so we go

The voyage long, the distance far

The path uneasy, the goal so hard

For growth we battle, for truth we yearn

With guidance we move, through failure we learn

For nearness we strive, with longing we burn

Scars we accrue, and strength we amass

Wisdom we glean, and tests we pass

We pray, we beg, we bow, we cry

We worship, we kneel, we love, we die–

To ourselves, to the world, but in Him, we abide

In heart’s beloved, at last, we’re alive